critical facultycrit-i-cal fac-ul-ty
A good working definition would be: The ability to mentally evaluate information, statements, or propositions, to determine if they are accurate, true, or likely.
dojodo-jo
A school for training in Japanese arts of self-defense, such as judo and karate.
On The Critical Faculty:“It is our only guarantee against delusion, deception, superstition, and misapprehension of ourselves and our earthly circumstances.” William Graham Sumner

Sunday, 1 July 2007

Bishop says UK floods are the wrath of God

Apparently Senior Church of England Bishops are claiming recent flooding in the UK as evidence of the wrath of God. The Bishop of Carlisle suggested new legislation in favour of homosexuals may have provoked God.

He said that whilst this actually affected innocent victims the flooding was a result of Western civilisations decision to ignore biblical teachings. The Bishop of Liverpool and the Right Reverend Dow, also seem to feel we are reaping what we are sowing.

One wonders why they have such a low opinion of God that he could not manage to flood the Palace of Westminster, it being on fairly low ground, right by the Thames, or strike it with lightening maybe. Parliament would, after all, be the logical target - and the better clearer ‘message’, if it really were an act of God, rather than the overwrought imagination of the Bishop.

If I were actually inclined to believe God was small minded I would be more likely to believe it was a judgement on voting for Tony Blair, the man, who with such a cavalier attitude to the democratic process, signed the EU constitutional Treaty as his last act as PM.

Maybe, like the terrorists, the Bishop feels God prefers a ‘softer’ target like Sheffield.

Or do they perhaps feel God, like some maiden aunt at a church fete coconut shy, is not quite up to it - and accidentally gets the stall holder instead? Some may recall immediately after the installation of the rather ‘controversial’ clergyman the Rt Rev David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham in 1984, York Minster was severely damaged by lightening strikes around midnight. This hints at a fairly good aim.

Have they been paying too much attention to some of the pronouncements of the more obviously ‘reasonableness challenged’ Imams?

Then one wonders, what about the people of New Orleans? I have no doubt many of those affected were devout Christians, would the Bishops suggest that it was another ‘soft target’ chosen because of the Administration in Washington DC. Again, given that Washington was effectively built on a swamp, one would have felt he could have managed something a little more direct, more obvious.

Or the people of the sate of Victoria in Australia. Droughts and now floods, what have they done?

All a bit too ‘Western’ maybe?

Then, as a random example, what had the Bangladeshis done to irritate, when 30 million of them were flooded out in July 2004’s monsoon? Wilfully being largely non-Christian perhaps?

No I don’t think that God uses the earth as his personal coconut shy. One suspects the explanation is more prosaic. Simply put - Shit happens.